Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Time Off: A Practical Guide to Building Your Rest Ethic and Finding Success Without the Stress

~ I received no compensation and opinions are 100% my own or my family. ~


Synopsis:  Discover the transformative power of leisure to recapture your calm and creativity.
We live in a time where busyness is often seen as a badge of honor. But are your busiest days really the ones that make you feel the most accomplished? If all of your hard work isn't working, it might be time to question the common assumption that “busy” = “productive.” After reaching breaking points in their careers, business coach John Fitch and AI researcher Max Frenzel both learned the critical importance of taking time off. Now these former workaholics are here to help you revolutionize the way you get things done.
Time Off: A Practical Guide to Building Your Rest Ethic and Finding Success Without the Stress reveals how history’s greatest minds, as well as some of the most successful leaders, thinkers, and creatives of today, found success by practicing a more balanced approach to work and life. Embracing their insights on how constant hustle can be your worst enemy, you will realize that time off means much more than just taking a break. By learning how to slow down, you will rediscover a more fulfilled and versatile version of yourself and unlock your true creative potential.
In Time Off, you’ll discover:
  • The most effective methods to reclaim leisure, while increasing productivity and creativity
  • Why your work ethic needs to be supported by an equally solid rest ethic
  • Tactics for getting away from the work without the dreaded guilt
  • Why time off and leisure will be key competitive advantages in the future of work
  • How to thrive alongside AI and use technology to become more human
  • The many ways in which time off improves your leadership skills, and much, much more!
Reshaping the way you think about work and leisure, Time Off is a reinvigorating guide to doing more by laboring less. If you like relatable personal anecdotes, historically-sound approaches to downtime, and scientifically-backed strategies for increasing your creativity, then you’ll love John Fitch and Max Frenzel’s life-changing resource.
Get Time Off – for yourself or as a gift to the busy people in your life – as a healthy reminder to put down the busywork and pick up what actually matters most to you.


Buy: amazon 



Excerpt: 

Rest Ethic


Take in a deep breath and hold it.

Keep holding.

How long can you hold your inhale until it gets uncomfortable?

Thirty seconds? A few minutes? It doesn’t take long until we all, eventually, need to exhale. 

Think of your work ethic as the inhale. (It is, in a way, as essential to your career as air is to your body.) With a good work ethic we make, execute, coordinate, manage, fulfill, and get things done. Task list—inhale. Project execution—inhale. Making our ideas come to life—inhale. 

But we can’t keep inhaling forever. Eventually we have to exhale. This exhale is your rest ethic, and it is just as essential.

A solid rest ethic gifts us inspiration, ideas, and recovery. It allows us to build up our enthusiasm and sustain our passion. Gaining a fresh perspective—exhale. Project ideation and “aha” moments—exhale. Letting big ideas incubate in your mind—exhale. And just as a deep exhale prepares you for a better inhale, your rest ethic enables you to have a better work ethic.

[…]

Excessive hours don’t guarantee quality work. And quality work, not quantity or busywork, is what a good work ethic is all about. Now, there are plenty of fantastic books out there about improving and refining your work ethic. Titles like 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Relentless, Mastery, and Turning Pro have got you covered. Our focus here will be on your rest ethic, leisure, and the wellspring of creativity and impactful ideas your time off can produce.

So, what might a well-designed rest ethic look like?

This book will teach you that it involves much more than taking a vacation or a day off. A great rest ethic is not just about working less. It’s about becoming conscious of how you spend your time, recognizing that busyness is often the opposite of productivity, admitting and respecting your need for downtime and detachment, establishing clear boundaries and saying no more often, giving your ideas time and space to incubate, evaluating what success means to you, and ultimately finding and unlocking your deepest creative and human potential.

A rest ethic and a work ethic—we need both. They are two sides of the same coin. But today, it seems like too many of us are running around holding our breath for way too long. How effective is our work ethic without enthusiasm and creativity? How can we be effective leaders and come up with the big, innovative, impactful ideas our world needs if we’re stressed and burned out?

The team behind this book experienced the need to exhale firsthand. John reached a breaking point in his life and discovered a novel concept of time while on a life-changing sabbatical. Max was drowning in busyness without feeling productive, and during some quiet days in the mountains started thinking back to his leisurely but highly productive Ph.D. days. Our illustrator Mariya was falling out of love with drawing because she had taken on too many projects and had to relearn to emphasize quality of work—and enjoyment—over quantity of projects. All three of us had a bumpy and winding road discovering the importance of having a rest ethic. We wrote this book to make your road a bit easier.




Max Frenzel is an AI researcher, writer, and digital creative. After receiving his PhD in Quantum Information Theory from Imperial College London and working as a postdoctoral research fellow at Tokyo University, Max has been involved in several tech startups, focusing on the intersection of AI research and product design. Most recently he has been interested in the applications of AI and deep learning to creativity, design, and music. Some of the AI-art Max has been involved in was exhibited at places like the Barbican Centre in London, and he is a regular public speaker on topics such as AI and creativity. In his time off, Max enjoys good coffee, tries to perfect his bread baking skills, and produces electronic music and performs around Tokyo. You can find him online at www.maxfrenzel.com.


John Fitch is a business coach, angel investor, and writer. He is a recovering workaholic who wrote Time Off for a former version of himself. John studied Business and Media at The University of Texas at Austin. He has built a career designing digital products and as an active angel investor in technologies that are automating the mundane work that most people don't enjoy. He cares deeply about the future of work and is optimistic that everyone has the opportunity to join the creative class in the near future. He cultivates great ideas and inspiration by hosting a dinner party, training Jiu-Jitsu, taking a short trip to somewhere new, farming, playing music, and dancing with his partner, Sara. You can find John at www.john-fitch.com

Twitter: @johnwfitch and @mffrenzel

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.